Personal care compositions such as toilet soaps are of course well known. Toilet soaps in bar form are usually formulated with a large variety of additives to provide benefits that are not inherent in the soap itself. For example, additives are employed to enhance the lathering of the soap, to enhance the mildness of the soap, to enhance its antibacterial effectiveness and numerous other benefits for the user. Additionally, various additives, such as talc, may be employed to reduce cost and provide various benefits to the user.
Commercial soap bars conventionally comprise one or more “soaps,” which, for purposes of describing this component of the compositions of the present invention, have the meaning as normally understood in the art: monovalent salts of monocarboxylic fatty acids.
The counterions of the salts generally include sodium, potassium, ammonium and alkanol ammonium ions, but may include other suitable ions known in the art. The soap bars may also include optional adjuvant ingredients such as moisturizers, humectants, antibacterials, water, fillers, polymers, dyes, fragrances and the like, to effect cleansing and/or conditioning of the skin of the user.
Typically, the soap components in conventional soap bars comprise salts of long chain fatty acids having chain links of the alkyl group of the fatty acids from about 8 carbon atoms, to about 18 carbon atoms in length. The particular length of the alkyl chain of the soaps is selected for various reasons including cleansing capability, lather capability, cost, and the like.
Among the additives employed in the production of toilet soap bars are free fatty acids (FFA) which serve to enhance the lathering or foaming ability of the bars. Such fatty acids also have an affect on the mildness of the soap. Quaternary ammonium compounds (Quat) and other cationic cosmetic ingredients have been used in “wash-off” cleansing products such as liquid body washes for their enhanced deposition on skin due to the ionic attraction between the cationic quaternary ammonium compound and skin protein.
However, many cationic cosmetic materials are not compatible in soap, combars (mixtures of soap and synthetic detergents) and even syndet cleansing compositions due to the anionic materials in most of these matrices.
Accordingly, there is a need for cleansing compositions such as toilet soap bars that exhibit enhanced skin feel attributes.